What if Leon Trotsky would have succeeded Lenin? What would history look like?

Comments ( 5 )

1. Andrew says

   My belief is that he may have introduced some different form of Soviet-ism and may have not gone as crazy as Stalin over power since he did have a better political experience than Stalin just taking power and wielding a gun at ANYBODY beside him that was against. However, there is an admitting fact that he would probably had a Stalin-esque badness inside of him since he was fighting for spreading to an international revolution and also would have caused a major difference for WW2 as well as major history. Yet, the Soviet Union may still be here in Trotsky’s case.

   My only saying is that if Lenin’s Testament was not suppressed as it was to the Congress and people, there would be a change in everything

   Reply

2. Alexis Rykov says

   History would be a disaster. World War II would have started 10 years early. Trotsky would have purged the military and killed poor Joseph Stalin by the 1930s.

   Reply

3. Brad Adams says

   Trotski would have worked for peaceful negotiations between the Soviet government and the peasants, while giving control over factories to the workers, and control over administrative districts to soviets (councils). The Great Purge would have never happened. Honestly, it is hard to think of what would have happened had Trotski not lost because, ultimately, it did happen.

   Had Trotski succeeded Lenin his power would not have been through the Party, an organization in which he had little power, but instead through the military, the organization he led pre-1925. The USSR may have become a military dictatorship, and the Party probably would have just served as a “discussion forum” for policies, but all real power would have lied within the military (Red Army). Stalin would likely have lived, not been purged or exiled, but would not have deared to critize the “dear leader”, Lev Trotski. The Comintern would have had much larger international role, and World War II maystarted about 10 years earlier than it did, due to countries fear and/or agitation over Trotski’s sponsorship of worldwide revolution. On the other hand, Trotski, a Jew, may have eben able to fulfill Marx’s vision of bring communism to industrialized countries (particularly Germany), and in Germany Hinderberg may have been overthrown and a workers’ state with only loose association (confederation) with the Soviet central government would have been established. Adolf Hitler would probably never have come to power, and had Trotski been more of a hardline authoritarian than I am giving him credit for potentially doing, protesters, nationalists, and non-internationalists like Adolf Hitler may have been exiled or exterminated, and parties such as the NSDAP banned.

   Reply

4. the c says

   Will’s hopefully would not have come true. Sadly for the Trotskyists, he was in his own way responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. If not hundreds of thousands. It was Trotsky who had the death penalty re-introduced (initially it was banned after the October Revolution) for counter revolutionaries. It was also Trotsky who was key to the policy that led to the ‘requisitioning’ (read stealing) of food from the peasants in the countryside to feed the industrial workers who supported the Bolsheviks during the civil war. This led to great hardship and famine in the countryside resulting in many deaths.

   In truth it is easy to say he would have been better. Had he won people would probably be saying, wasn’t it a shame that Stalin bloke didn’t win. He was never as nasty as that horrible Trotsky.

   Reply

5. AverageJoe says

   The evil of Communism would have had a different face in history.

   Reply